COLLEGE: Campus polling sites extend hours as civil rights activists threaten legal action
AUSTIN — College students from Texas State University in San Marcos and Prairie View A&M are winning fights for extended polling hours on campus as Texas sees a surge in early midterm voting. Meanwhile, universities across the state are reporting high turnout among students, with some waiting in lines for over an hour to cast their ballots.
“We’re expecting massive turnout,” said Maddy Scannell, with the Young Democrats at Rice University in Houston. “The enthusiasm for the election is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
College-aged voters tend to lean Democrat and traditionally vote at very low rates in midterm elections. But this year, with a hotly contested U.S. Senate race and President Donald Trump playing
an outsized role, both parties are targeting young voters.
“Parties know if they can hook a voter young they can keep them on the line for many cycles,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “It is a high cost of investment, but in the long run it pays off.”
Democrat Beto O’Rourke is heavily courting young voters in his bid to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is making his own visits to colleges in the Rio Grande Valley next week.
Among the largest 15 counties in Texas — several of which are home to university campuses — early voters are turning out in numbers that far exceed past midterms, according to data from the Texas Secretary of State. And voters between the ages of 18 and 39 are casting early ballots at higher rates this year than in 2014, Rottinghaus said.
Several of the state’s universities — including the University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas A&M at College Station and Texas Tech in Lubbock — have polling places on campus during early voting and on election day.
But a handful of others don’t, forcing students to find other ways to the polls.
The University of Houston’s main campus doesn’t have a polling location for early voting, but will have one election day.
In the meantime, Keffus Falls III, a junior who is working for O’Rourke’s campaign, has been driving students from campus to the nearest polling place. He’s seen conservative groups on campus doing the same thing.
“A lot of students on campus don’t have cars and some people stay on campus,” Falls said. “I really believe that students feel more included to actually get involved and it’s really awesome to see.”
Legal action prompts changes
Under threat of legal action, at least two counties this week expanded early voting hours on college campuses.
Hays County commissioners decided Friday to add early voting locations in three of the county’s four precincts, including at Texas State University, on Nov. 1 and 2.
The action came a day after voting rights groups threatened to sue if county officials didn’t reopen the early voting site at Texas State University, which counts nearly 40,000 students. Earlier in the week, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, DAustin, had also pressed for extended hours at the campus voting locations, after some students reported waiting over an hour to cast a ballot.
Commissioners said long lines weren’t exclusive to the university polling place. By Thursday, more than 20 percent of registered voters in Hays County had already cast a ballot, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
Chloe Troupe, a senior at Texas State, said she waited an hour and a half to vote on campus Monday. Sophomore Gabriel Cortez took one look at the line of student voters snaking through the LBJ Student Center and turned around. He opted to instead drive to a polling location off campus, where the wait was just 10 minutes.
“It was cool a lot of people waited,” Cortez said. “I don’t have time for that.”
Meanwhile, Waller County commissioners agreed Wednesday to add voting hours at the oncampus polling place for Prairie View A&M University, after the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed a federal lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, took issue with the absence of voting locations on the school’s campus during the first week of early voting. The suit contends that the county is violating the civil rights of the university’s 8,400 students, 82 percent of whom are black.
Waller County commissioners voted to extend voting hours at the on-campus polling location next week. That polling site was previously scheduled to open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but will now open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Oct. 29 through Oct. 31.
Enthusiasm high at UT, A&M
Other Texas colleges and universities with polling places on campus report long wait times for student voters.
Brazos County has had a polling place on the campus of Texas A&M since the mid-1980s. It’s one of five early voting locations for the county and one of 25 open on election day.
“I would hate to be at a school without access to a polling location on campus,” said Sean Jankowski, chairman of the Texas A&M College Republicans. “You hear the youth doesn’t come out to vote. This boosts youth turnout across the board.”
The election is a hot topic in College Station, with students handing out buttons, stickers, and fliers for races up and down the ballot.
“There’s a higher level of enthusiasm on campus, especially for a midterm election,” Jankowski said.
It’s not just on campus. Brazos County is seeing turnout higher than the 2016 presidential election, according to elections administrator Trudy Hancock.
The University of Texas at Austin, meanwhile, added a second polling location on campus this election cycle at the library.
McKenna Massey, a freshman biology major at UT Austin, waited in line for 45 minutes on Wednesday to vote.
“It wasn’t that bad. I knew I needed to set aside time this week to do it, so I planned accordingly,” Massey said. Jasper Scherer, Kaylee Dusang and Catherine Marfin contributed to this report.